No39Mothercourage

BRECHT/ÕUNPUU/DESSAU/MÄNDLA

The
German playwright
Bertolt Brecht was a refugee living in exile in 1939. He sensed that
imminent war was in the air. Brecht was a sensitive person in terms
of society. His plays and poetry observed that human relationships
were becoming progressively more fragile. They perceived the
disintegration of the world into a thousand angry men already waiting
with spears in hand. Not for an idea, not for a dream, not even for a
slice of bacon do they stand – but rather for the wish to give in
to their instincts and cross the threshold of humaneness back into
the dark cave.

One
of Brecht’s most important plays, Mother
Courage
tells us the story of a merchant who is also a mother of three
children who are approaching adulthood. They find themselves in the
tumult of war in an imaginary 17th
century. The mother must make choices. She always wishes to choose
survival but ends up with death every time. War is raging, rules and
the world are upside down. Characters, who are a combination of
insanity, comedy, brutality and epicurism, emerge around her. The war
chariot rides onward, fuelled by Mother Courage’s unflagging
business sense and accompanied by the songs and dances of Courage and
her entourage, all of them together looking towards where our sun is
setting for the last time.